Looking For Quacks In The Pavement

Category: Books
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I’m not going to bore you with a lengthy review. If you’re a Feist fan, you’re going to read this book. If you’re not familiar with his work or not a fan, there’s very little chance that you’ll make it far enough through his written output to end up at this book.

I just want to say two quick things about “Wrath of a Mad God.”

One: This is the first time that I’ve spotted glaring, huge continuity problems in one of Ray’s books. Erik von Darkmoor never married? Are you kidding me? A major part of the last two Serpentwar books just gets thrown away like that, eh? That’s not the only continuity error, but it’s the one which sticks out most in my mind. There are several others that even I was able to spot. And I’m not good at that sort of thing!

Two: I’m glad it’s over. (No, I don’t care if he’s intending to write more books in this setting. Really, it’s over.) Enough of the questions are answered. Kind of. I mean, let’s count how many times have we seen Feist use a variant of this line: “Okay, the truth this time. I mean it.” Right. Sure. Whatever. But that’s not really my point. It’s just gotten to the point where the levels of threat and destruction and mayhem and sacrifice have gotten out of hand. There’s always going to be one more bigger badder threat which requires a total rewrite of the series’ mythology (how many versions of “the nature of the gods” have we been subjected to?) and a higher body count and… let it go already. There are only so many times you can crank up the threat levels before your story becomes… well… Dragonball Z. You don’t want your story to be compared to DBZ, do you?

I consider this book to be closure on the Pug-And-Thomas storyline. I’m not even that curious about the Quor (who, of course, it is now revealed in the very book in which they’re introduced that they were native to Midkemia from before the Chaos Wars or some-such and the Valheru respected them (what??) and blah blah blah) since it’s actually kind of obvious what they’re meant to be (if the Dreadcritters are from a lower plane, where do you suppose the shiny Quor come from, duh) and… I’m tired of mythology rewrites.

I still count the Riftwar through the end of the Serpentwar as my favorite storyline ever. This is much the same way that I still love (most of) Anne McCaffrey’s Pern books up to All The Weyrs, and the same way I (against all logic or decency) love the Eddings’ Belgariad and Elenium. It’s just that after a certain point all of these writers seem to have lost their sense of perspective and common sense. Sad, really, but apparently also inevitable. So be it.

I’ll give The Eddings this much: “The Elder Gods” is an improvement over the disaster named “The Redemption of Althalus.” As you can imagine, though, I don’t think that’s saying very much.

What does this new book get right? Oddly enough, one of the improvements is that it doesn’t try so hard to be clever. Oh, you’ll recognize almost all of the catchphrases from earlier Eddings characters, but we’re not smothered in smirking repartee to nearly the level that “Althalus” reaches.

Another improvement is a step away from The Eddings Archetypes. That’s right, folks, there is no instantly-recognizable Polgara/Sephrenia-type character in the book! Now, I like Aunt Pol well enough, but seeing her casually reworked for each new story gets a bit tiring.

The last bit of good in this new series is the occasional hint of potential conflict between real characters some time down the road. This isn’t to say these hints will pay off, but it’s nice to think that this series may grow some actual fangs… eventually.

That brings us to the disappointing aspects of the book.

What we have here is a slightly better story told not entirely unlike that of “Althalus.” The chief differences are that there are more characters, and there’s no time travel involved. Oh, and the enemy’s even easier to hate. In fact, that’s among my biggest problems with this book. The baddies? Bug-snake-men. A giant swarming hive of ‘em. That’s right, folks, The Eddings are picking on a nice safe target instead of taking the risk that there may be actual moral qualms on the part of our intrepid heroes. This is a disturbing trend I’ve seen among a lot of recent genre works, this unwillingness to make actual people the antagonists. The only crisis is “the nasties are invading, we must stop them.”

Well, okay, there is a minor crisis of conscience late in the book… and it’s resolved within a chapter or so. Right. Remember when it took several books in the series for Garion to finally come to grips with his treatment of Asharak the Murgo? Yeah, there’s nothing like that here.

There’s another annoyance that you might not ordinarily think of as such. You see, everyone gets along. Very well. Extraordinarily well. Does this sound familiar to anyone? A diverse group of clever, intelligent, and overwhelmingly reasonable people who may find one another occasionally amusing but they all have “grudging” mutual respect? Have we been down this road a few times already? But this time it’s even better, because there’s multiples of everyone! We have two clever young lads who’d rather be doing something else but are forced by circumstances to take a larger role in things. We have two reluctant, moderately gifted, loyalty-inspiring leaders-of-men who are thrust into a campaign alongside what are normally mortal enemies but are so damned reasonable that they think almost nothing of it. We have four godlings, and four “dreamers” (of which the Aphrael-clone is one).

Okay, I take it back, what I said earlier about there not being a Polgara-type: Mother Sea (yes, the Earth and the Sea are characters, as is the Moon) comes off as very much cut from that mold. Ah, well. At least she doesn’t show up very often. That’s got to count for something, right?

We only have one exceptionally talented archer with uncommon perceptive skills and a knack for politics, military campaigns and espionage, but one of him is more than enough.

What really irks me about this book, I suppose, is one of the things that irked me about “Althalus.” (Yes, I’m sure you’re shocked and amazed.) While the characterization in “The Elder Gods” is a huge improvement, the characters don’t generally have any meaningful flaws. Everyone’s just so damned likeable, and for some reason that makes me want to not like the whole bunch of them that much more.

Again we contrast to the earlier, vastly superior Belgariad. Silk’s mouth got him in actual trouble from time to time. Garion’s youthful indecision and impulsiveness got everyone into trouble on occasion. Hettar was a classic obsessive type and had to be reined in fairly regularly. Mandorallen could be both impossibly dense and rudely overbearing at times. These characteristics were smoothed away a bit over the course of the series, but at least they didn’t start out in a state of near-perfection.

Speaking of contrasts, how about those bad guys? A maimed, unloved god? An apostate former friend and ally? Various characters of significant magical or political power whose alliances tended to shift back and forth as need dictated? All of that made for interesting conflicts. And none of that is in this book. “Kill those bug-snake-men,” that’s the whole of it. They even manage to turn a decent mid-book all-human naval confrontation into just another skirmish against the hive critters, by grafting a wholly-unsurprising new motivation onto the antagonists of the moment.

I think it boils down to the fact that The Eddings, much like Anne McCaffrey has done, have reached a point where they can’t stand hurting any of their characters, nor can they stand having lead characters that somebody out there may dislike in some way for any reason at all. But mostly it’s about the not-hurting. The problem is, if your characters aren’t getting hurt, where’s the conflict that drives the story?

My all-time favorite fantasy-ish series is Raymond E. Feist’s “Riftwar” books, and most of the books that come after. (And by “most” I mean “everything but those forgettable ‘Krondor the Whatever’ books. Oh well, nobody’s perfect.) One thing Mr. Feist has done that impresses me is that he’s actually become tougher on his characters as time goes by. The first book of the “Serpentwar” series startled me with how gritty and harsh the depictions of war became. People died all over the place. Those who survived were scarred in some fashion, and the meaningful scars were psychological.

One doesn’t go into an Eddings novel expecting that sort of gritty realism, but it’s hard to invest oneself in a story that’s so bland as to barely impose itself upon your psyche.

That’s not the worst of it, though. Oh, no. There’s one last thing that really annoyed me, and that’s the climax of the military campaign (such as it was). It’s spoileriffic, however, so you may just want to stop reading here. Really.

I’m about to spoil a big part of the ending. You can, if you want, stop reading this entry right here and get the gist of how I feel about the book.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you…

See, it was starting to get interesting there towards the end. The good guys get outsmarted, and then outmaneuvered, and then ambushed. Hey, the bad guys are getting in a good beating, this is pretty cool! Action, drama! Wait, what’s that? The good guys are cut off, surrounded, and running out of oh-so-clever ideas? Well now, let’s see what kind of heroic sacrifice or effort will be involved in getting out of this mess—

ZOT! BOOM! And one of the gods makes the whole damned problem go away.

Wait wait wait WAIT! Are you kidding me? We gave up on the “ex machina” and went for pure “deus”? No muss, no fuss, nobody gets hurt? ARGH! This is almost as bad of a cheat as the time-travel ourobourus ending to “Althalus,” and that’s saying something.

Okay, the spoilers are done. It’s safe to read below this point.

Was I entertained by this book? Oh, sure. Was I disappointed? Yes, that too. Is it an improvement over the author’s previous work? Mostly. Should you rush out and buy a copy? Used, paperback, maybe. If you liked “Althalus,” you’ll totally dig this. If you think the Eddings’ material started going downhill during or after the first Sparhawk series, you should probably steer clear of this unless you’re a sucker for their style of clever banter. (In case you hadn’t already figured it out: Unfortunately, I am.) If you’ve never read an Eddings book… go grab the Belgariad books, which are far and away the best material bearing the author’s name.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to dive into the other book I picked up at Powell’s the other day…

As I prepare to embark on a novel-writing adventure, I should tell you about my recent novel-reading adventure. And by “adventure” I mean “week-long slog.”

So there’s this castle near the barrier/border between the lands of normal folks and the lands of the fairie-folk. The king’s been kidnapped, and through a series of circumstances power is thrust into the hands of twin royal siblings, Barrick and Briony. One’s a petulant, moody sort with a weak constitution. The other’s a hot-tempered, moody sort with a yen for crossdressing. There are other characters (and charicatures) running around, but the story centers on those two. Oh, and a halfling— um, Funderling named Chert. And… oh, nevermind. I’m not here to run through the list of principal characters who inhabit Southmarch. We’d be here all afternoon.

Meanwhile, a continent or so away, we meet a young lady who gets sucked up into palace intrigue as the newest of a horde of wives of a pharaonic despot sort of ruler. Periodically the book takes little side trips to check on her miserable existence. One assumes that in later volumes she’ll become, you know, important or some-such.

I’ll sum up: Lots of bad things happen. In fact, very few good things happen. People die, often in creepy and/or grisly fashion. Betrayals and intrigue abound. Dark magicks are employed. There’s not much in the way of humor, and there’s an incredible weight of plot setup that, one again assumes, will pay off in the later books. There’s no cliffhanger ending (though until the last few chapters I was convinced there would be), and in fact this book manages to end satisfactorily instead of just abruptly cutting off. Mind you, it’s one of those “now all the pieces are in motion for the next volume” endings, but it could’ve been worse.

Did I enjoy it? Well enough to keep reading it every night or so, but when I hit the end I was relieved rather than antsy for the next book. That’s not what we call “a good sign.” Oh, it’s well written, and the characters are fairly well fleshed out, and at the end I got the feeling that the plot from there on out will be rather interesting… but getting to that point took some doing. “Tedious” is one word that comes to mind.

Your mileage may vary, but my basic recommendation is to wait for it in paperback and pick it up only if you’re committed to the fantasy genre and really need a complex bit of work to sink your teeth into.

A few years ago I picked up a little paperback titled Pawn of Prophecy. I enjoyed the characterization, I liked the handling of what could have been an overdone plot (the quest for the powerful bauble), and I loved the dialog. Many books later, I cherish the Belgariad and Malloreon series as some of my favorite light fantasy reading. I also enjoy the Elenium and Tamuli trilogies, though at a lesser degree and for different reasons.

It was with a certain amount of trepidation that I approached the reading of The Redemption Of Althalus, a one-off fantasy work representing the latest efforts by the Eddings pair. So how is Althalus, you ask? In a word, underwhelming. If you want more words, I’d simply say, “Go read the Tamuli instead.” Or even better, “Go read the Belgariad instead.”

Here’s the book summary: Wisecracking thief pairs up with sensual overbearing goddess, collects motley crew of lesser heroes to handily defeat ill-defined enemy forces, continually engaging in occasionally-witty banter and unsurprising character revelations. Oh yeah, they have nearly total freedom to move in time and space. And the climax of the story is a kind of insane Mobius strip finale that wraps up so very tidily that you wonder what the hell all the fuss was about in the first place.

If you’ve read previous Eddings material, you’ll recognize almost everything in this book, and you’ll actually resent what little has been added. It’s as though they deliberately took the weakest parts of the earlier works and melded them with a truly offensive Plot Device. Okay, so the interpersonal stuff is at least as fun to read as anything else they’ve done, but it simply cannot carry an otherwise lifeless story.

I suppose we should all be thankful that they only wrote one book in this new world. I’d have been truly angry to have finished a trilogy full of this nonsense.

If you’ve read my review of Nimisha’s Ship, you’re probably aware of my distaste for the direction Anne McCaffrey has taken in some of her more recent novels. I approached the reading of Skies with a certain amount of trepidation.

I’m pleased to say that this book does not suffer from many of the problems that have plagued her other recent works. The things that happen, even if they are a bit “out there,” do make sense within the bounds of the known world of Pern. In fact, almost everything in the novel is built upon various elements of earlier Pern novels like All The Weyrs, Dolphins and even the mostly-damnable Masterharper. It seems as though Pern really is her native element, and she moves as beautifully through it now as she has at her best moments in years past.

The key romance in the novel is telegraphed from the get-go, but if you’re a regular McCaffrey reader you know that this has always been her style. The primary conflicts are more or less based on previous events, so having read the full series is generally a good idea. What’s interesting is that it isn’t actually necessary, since background data is presented in such a way that it makes sense even to non-fans, but it also does a wonderful job of evoking the relevant part of the previous work in just the right way. I was often pleasantly surprised at how well one reference or another was handled.

Overall, I recommend this novel to anyone, long-time fan or no, who likes a pleasant mixture of adventure, science, fantasy and romance. It obviously helps to be somewhat familiar with at least the original Dragonriders series, if not fully versed in the series entire. I think that a non-fan could get the gist of the story and enjoy it on its own merits, however.

It’s my first media review, and I have to pick on one of my all-time favorite authors. This woman helped convince me that the written word is one of the most inspiring and wonderful tools humans have ever created. When I start having delusions of adequacy, when I begin again to dream of being An Author… she is among my key inspirations.

She, being one Anne McCaffrey, is also getting on in years. No, I’m not being ageist, but it’s the only explanation I have for the gradual shift in her writing. She used to have more grit and fire in her plots and characterizations. She used not to be so afraid to punish the bad guys. My wife and I both noticed this in the last couple of Talents novels (“Pegasus In Space” and “The Tower And The Hive”), and the kid gloves are still firmly tied in place for “Nimisha’s Ship.”

Lest you think I didn’t like the book, please allow me to say that it’s a pleasant read. It’s nearly a whole new continuity, unless you happen to have stumbled across “The Coelura” some time back. There are some slightly different things she’s trying to accomplish in this novel. Some of them succeed admirably, others are just kind of silly. So long as you’re willing to check your cynicism at the door, you should get a kick out of this novel.

Sadly, that’s my biggest problem. At some point in the story, the Big Bad Villain And Company are completely written out. Echoes of “The Tower And The Hive” haunt these pages… A Villain whose name starts with the letter V is introduced, sort of, allowed to thrash around a bit in random paragraphs, and then is simply discarded in a bit of ancillary dialog later on. “Oh, him? He got his. Now, moving right along…”

There’s another key part of the later novel that readers of the “Rowan” series of books will probably recognize, but I won’t give away here. You’ll either love it or groan in misery. I did both.

All told, it’s nice light reading for all that it skips lightly through years’ worth of events in the lives of a handful of people we don’t really get to know all that well. Everything’s tidied up in a neat package at the end, aww gee isn’t that nice?

In the end, if you like the romantic happy side of McCaffrey’s work you should adore “Nimisha’s Ship.” If you were hoping for something with a little more meat on its bones, I don’t really know what to suggest other than maybe to go borrow some of her earlier books from the library. Ye gods, I sure hope that “Skies Of Pern” doesn’t disappoint me the way that the last Pegasus and Rowan books did, and the way this one did as well.

(Note: Yes, “Skies” is out but I have to wait for the paperback. You can’t really be in that big of a hurry for me to write another Media review, can you? Maybe you should seek professional help.)